So you’ve got your HSC Trial exams coming up? It’s a scary time! 3-hour exams are a lot to sit through, so I thought I’d put this HSC trial exam study guide together to help you study for and ace your HSC trial exams this year!
The trial exams are formatted as a ‘practice’ run of the HSC exams, crammed into a much short time frame, and written by each individual school. For those reasons, the exams are typically more difficult than the HSC exams themselves.
Trials are often the most heavily-weighted internal assessment during year 12, and so, have a significant impact on your rank leading into the HSC exams. So, it’s super important to give it your best shot to ensure you finish the year with the best rank possible!
Let’s jump into studying for trials and my top tips for the day of your exam…
Table of Contents
Trial Exam Study Process
We are really taught to believe that studying for exams is a difficult process. School programs us to see it as a chore, with countless ways of doing it and no way to see what’s working.
The benefit of year 12, and especially trials, is that studying for exams is quite possibly easier than in any other high school year!
I’m about to show you why:
Get the Boring Stuff Out of the Way First
The boring stuff = notes, revision, flashcards
Before you really start studying for trials, you should have completed the following:
- Have all class notes aligned with a relevant syllabus dot point and make sure notes aren’t super in-depth
- Create flashcards for the acronyms associated with all syllabus dot points, memorise these
- FORGET ABOUT REVISION – don’t get a highlighter and read through your notes. It does nothing!
Good job. Now we can start the real study…
Past Papers All Day, Everyday
Remember when I said studying for trials is the easiest study so far? Yeah, that’s because you have years worth of prewritten exams with the exact questions you’ll be asked, all just sitting there waiting for you.
These are called past papers, and you’ll find them for each subject on the NESA Website.
Like I said, past papers have the questions from all HSC exams over the past 20 odd years, so it’s full of questions you’re likely to see in your trial exams (remember it’s all based on the same syllabus!)
Past papers are the best way to study because they give you a feel for what the questions will be, they show you what a 3-hour exam looks and feels like, and they provide you with a quick estimator on where your content knowledge is.
Using past papers is the only way I recommend you study for trials (after the boring stuff), because it shows you where your weaknesses are!
Studying for exams should always be focussed on your weaknesses, not strengths. This allows you to maximise your marks, and not waste time learning something you already know.
So how can we use past papers to study? Well, there’s a process you should follow, and a guide you should know before jumping into it…
The Process
When using past papers to study, follow this process.
Print out a paper and complete it in full:
- Using your notes and without any timed conditions
- Using your notes but under timed conditions
- Without notes, but without any timed conditions
- Without notes, and under timed conditions
This will help you get a feel for the subject’s exam, without destroying your confidence. Work your way up to the full paper without notes, and then go ‘guns blazing’ from there.
The Point
Past papers serve a very specific purpose for our study, and each section of the paper has it’s own purpose within that:
- Multiple-Choice
- Learning
- Used to learn content knowledge and highlight anything that you don’t know
- Short Response
- Testing
- Used to test your content knowledge with specific, concise questions
- Extended Response
- Consolidating
- Used to link your content knowledge across multiple topics into one cohesive response
Use each section for its purpose and focus your study on the parts you struggle with.
Enjoying this trials post? Check out this similar HSC post:
How to write a killer essay for your HSC
Trial Exam Study Tips
Here are my top 10 tips to beat procrastination, study more productively, and ultimately smash those exams:
- Time-lapse your study session
- Set up your phone alongside you, facing you, and timelapse yourself studying. This will keep you off your phone, on-task and give you something cool to watch back afterwards
- Study smarter, not harder
- Focus on maximising your marks in areas where you struggle. You’re better off turning a 1/4 answer into a 4/4, than trying to turn a 3/4 into a 4/4
- Use spaced repetition
- Space out your memorisation sessions with a longer gap between each one. This gives the brain time to forget the concept, and relearn it, leading to better long-term memory
- Keep an error diary
- Each time you get a question wrong, record it and try it again in a couple of days
- Use multiple-choice to procrastinate
- Print out the last 4 years of multi-choice for each of your subjects and keep them on your desk. Every time you don’t feel like studying, complete one of them, mark it and record your result
- Don’t take breaks in your study space
- Don’t finish a session and then whip out your phone at your desk. You’ll never get back to studying. Instead, leave your study area, take a break (i.e. at the beach, go for a run, play a sport, etc.) and then get back to it!
- Use to-do lists
- The holy grail for staying productive. I use the Microsoft To-Do app to keep myself accountable during the day. Each morning I add tasks I need to complete that day and then tick them off throughout the day
- Keep your binge streaming short
- If you have to watch Netflix, keep the episodes to a maximum of 25 mins. This will prevent you from switching out of study mode and into relax mode, hindering your ability to stay productive. Watch something like Brooklyn 99 or the Office for a quick study break
- Stagger the difficulty of your study
- If you start the day with an intense task (i.e. a full past paper), finish the day with something easier (i.e. some multi-choice or error diary practice)
- Avoid burnout – take breaks often
- Start studying early (at least 5 weeks before exams) so that you can afford to take a day or two off when the time comes. I promise you, cramming will only make you more stressed, and ruin your exam marks. Remember to take breaks often to ensure you don’t crash on the day of the exam
Trials – Exam Day
My process for exam day:
- Prepare your bag the night before
- Clear pencil case, a CLEAR bottle of water, multiple BLACK pens, calculator, ruler, ANALOG watch
- Get to school 15 mins before your exam starts
- Walk into school with your headphones on and a banana in hand
- Sit on your own and listen to music while you eat your banana
- Leave your notes at home – don’t study before the exam
- Put your phone in your bag, go to the bathroom, and then walk straight into the exam room with your chin up
- Remember that you don’t know what you don’t know – so focus on what you do know
- Have a look at the paper in full during the reading time – start wherever you are most confident
- Smash that paper
- Walk out of the exam room and go home
- Don’t talk to your friends about the exam, it’ll just stress you out!
- Reward yourself with a night off and then get ready for the next one
This is the process I followed before every exam and it worked a charm. I was relaxed and prepared before each exam because I started my study early and was well and truly ready before exam day. I didn’t get hungry thanks to my banana, and I didn’t need to waste time at the bathroom because I went before-hand.
That’s it. Short, sharp and sweet.
I’ve tried to keep today’s post to the point because I want you to stop reading and start studying!
So, go do that…
Out,
Uncle N.